Renault Monday debrief: Magny Cours

Ferrari ahead of Renault wasn't quite what the script had called for at
the centenary Grand Prix, but the Renault F1 Team is relishing the
challenge of coming back even stronger in Hockenheim. Head of Trackside
Engine Operations Denis Chevrier ...

Ferrari ahead of Renault wasn't quite what the script had called for at
the centenary Grand Prix, but the Renault F1 Team is relishing the
challenge of coming back even stronger in Hockenheim. Head of Trackside
Engine Operations Denis Chevrier explains...

Q: Denis, arriving at the team's home race, 100 years after Renault won the
first ever French Grand Prix, it seemed like the script had been written
for a Renault win. How much of a disappointment was second place?

Denis Chevrier: We go to every race looking to win, so of course it's disappointing when
you cannot. We felt we were very strongly placed after qualifying and
that we would be able to make our consistency count in race conditions.
But we are not over-dramatising things either: you have to finish second
if you cannot win, and there is never a colossal difference between the
two in terms of points. Strategically, it was an important second place.

A points-system that rewards consistency must be a real help -- I think
our view of the points system has turned around a little compared to
earlier in the season! Back then, we were winning a lot of races but only
edging away from Ferrari and Schumacher in the championships, and it was
quite frustrating. But this weekend, with a performance deficit, it was
certainly something that we benefited from, and we still have a very good
gap in both championships.

Q:Ferrari have now won two races in a row -- is this a definitive shift
in the balance of power during this mid-season period?

DC: It is a close fight between the two teams, as it has been all year and
will continue to be. There is no reason to panic -- neither in terms
of the championship situation, nor the technical status quo between the
teams. Ferrari happen to have won two races in a row -- but we
dominated four in a row before that. There is no reason to think that the
pendulum will not swing back in our favour in the coming weeks.

Q: What is the atmosphere like in the team at the moment?

DC: Excellent, as always. When you win, you cannot rest on your laurels
celebrating it -- it is quickly gone. The same is true when you lose,
and our priority is to get on with our jobs and look to the next
challenge. There is only one thing we can do: that's studying how we can
make our car go even faster.

Q: Will there be a secret to regaining the upper hand?

DC: The next race we win will be down to only one thing: applying ourselves
to the job in hand, which means gaining tenths of a second here, tenths
there, and getting those improvements on the car as quickly as possible.
Win or lose, it changes nothing in our approach: we have to carry on
improving in order to take the fight to our rivals.

Q: Finally, the team has already said that the RS26-C will benefit from even
more performance in Hockenheim. What's the plan?

DC: The C specification engine was introduced as a new family of engines,
which gave us a baseline for then developing the V8 even further.
Fernando will have a one-race old unit in Hockenheim, Giancarlo a brand
new one, but both drivers will benefit from performance upgrades for the
next race. The engine is intrinsically capable of achieving greater
performance, and by changing both the tuning and the way we run the
engine, we will be able to unlock more of it from the next race onwards.